January 27, 2016

Empty Calories And Empty Strategies

Coke introduced a new campaign last week. Well, new for them, but not new for us.

We've seen it a thousand times -- music beds and beautiful young people of all colors jumping around.

The funny thing is, if you read what the marketing guy had to say (and can fight your way through all the jargon and cliches) he got the strategy part right. He made two main points:

1. They are going to a "one-brand" strategy.

2. Coke (and, by the way, so many other brands) have gotten way too philosophical and brand-y, and have forgotten about the product.

So far, so good.

Now here comes the bad part. The public never sees the strategy document. All they see are the spots. If the spots suck, the whole thing sucks. And, sadly, the spots pretty much suck.

Yes, they're beautifully and expensively produced. The sound design for the opening scene alone probably cost more than most spots. But the campaign is empty. You could stick the old tag line "Open Happiness" over any of the final scenes and not know that Coke had done anything but add more product shots to old footage. In fact, you could put the Pepsi logo at the end and feel just fine about it.

By the way, the new tagline is Taste The Feeling. Or Feel The Taste, or something. It's a least-objectionable-tagline . It will be forgotten as quickly as these spots will.

And speaking of the spots, they are emotionalistic without being emotional.

When you have a campaign that is kicked off with a spot named "Anthem" you can be pretty sure you're in deep shit. It means you have a song masquerading as an idea. It's a "made-for-the-bottler-meeting" movie.

Coke is probably the world's most popular brand. But all the health/cultural trends are against them. When you're in a tough spot, sometimes there is an irresistible urge to punt.

"Shakespeare was a storyteller. You're a copywriter.""Good ads appeal to us as consumers. Great ads appeal to us as humans.""As an ad medium, the web is a much better yellow pages and a much worse television."

"Sometimes success in the advertising business requires sitting quietly and letting clients proceed with their hysterical delusions."

"Marketers prefer precise answers that are wrong to imprecise answers that are right."

"Brand studies last for months, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and generally have less impact on business than cleaning the drapes."

"The idea that the same consumer who was frantically clicking her TV remote to escape from advertising was going to merrily click her mouse to interact with it is going to go down as one of the great advertising delusions of all time."

"Nobody really knows what "creativity" is. Every year thousands of people take a pilgrimage to find out. This involves flying to Cannes, snorting cocaine, and having sex with smokers."

"Marketers habitually overestimate the attraction of new things and underestimate the power of traditional consumer behavior."

"We don’t get them to try our product by convincing them to love our brand. We get them to love our brand by convincing them to try our product."

"In American business, there is nothing stupider than the previous generation of management."

"If the message is right, who cares what screen people see it on? If the message is wrong, what difference does it make?"

"The only form of product information on the planet less trustworthy than advertising is the shrill ravings of web maniacs."

"There's no bigger sucker than a gullible marketer convinced he's missing a trend."

"All ad campaigns are branding campaigns. Whether you intend it to be a branding campaign is irrelevant. It will create an impression of your brand regardless of your intent."

"Nobody ever got famous predicting that things would stay pretty much the same."